If I may be allowed to speculate further on the subject of truth, let me say that my objections to religions are not so much with the religions themselves, but with their adherents, and in particular their fundamentalists. I understand religion and the need that the human being has for reference points and answers to fundamental questions about the meaning of life etc. The human being is a social being and so requires a collective experience and a collective security and the all-embracing social nature of religion and the collective experience of church, chapel, mosque or whatever with its rituals and symbols provides people with a comfort and security that an atomised and individual experience cannot. The sociologist Emile Durkheim told us that
“What is needed if social order is to reign is that the mass of men be content with their lot. But what is needed for them to be content, is not that they have more or less, but they be convinced that they have no right to more. And for this, it is absolutely essential that there be an authority whose superiority they acknowledge and what tells them what is right.”
As a result, religion refers to those socially shared ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that have to do with the supernatural. Humans appear to need to explain what they regard as supernatural forces, and, as we saw, even people in advanced and educated societies like modern America attempt to describe natural disasters as a form of supernatural occurrence that happens for a reason. Thus, in their religious behaviour and practice, humans create a social world of rules and meanings that not only govern, but explain their experiences in individual and social life and in their daily social interaction, and this form of social activity becomes internalised in our individual consciousness, shaping our personality and providing strategies for coping with life. As a result, religion is one of the most powerful integrating mechanisms we have at our disposal for producing the social order Durkheim is concerned with, providing meanings, an authority structure, and a commonality of belief and solidarity, but, I would argue that an understanding of that is far more important and satisfying than an understanding of 'truth'. It is not truth we should be seeking, but an understanding of how 'the truth' is poisonous and dangerous and how we can combat the hate and discrimination that emanates from all forms of truths. However, as I said, my main problem is with fundamentalism as I find fundamentalists of all stripes very unattractive and completely irrational; they are impossible to have any kind of logical relationship with as their minds are completely closed and quite impenetrable.
For example, The Bible tells us that we cannot know the absolute truth and that is why at the end of the day the whole Christian message is based on faith and if you knew the truth then you wouldn't need faith. God has no empirical existence as we cannot see, feel, or touch Him/Her. So, as we cannot gain our knowledge of God directly from source, we are reliant on secondary knowledge, principally a book but crucially, on the various interpretations of that book for our knowledge of God, and indeed that applies to all major religions. We must therefore have faith that not only that the book is true, but also the interpretations of that book. So, if you cannot directly know 'the truth' then you have no justification for persecuting, punishing and murdering those of us who do not share your (incomplete) belief system, because, as your truth emanates from secondary sources, it may just not be true. That applies if you are a Christian, a Communist, a Muslim, a Jew or a member of the Flat Earth Society etc. Indeed if you are a Christian you are expressly forbidden to punish anyone who disagrees with you because you are bound by your religion to love your neighbour and leave all punishments to your God who tells you that "Vengeance is mine". So, if you believe the Bible, or any other secondary source of supernatural revelation, then you are in serious breach of your faith if you persecute, kill or discriminate against any other human being in respect to belief, race, gender etc. I can find no reference in the Bible giving Christians permission to punish other people. That thar's the truth, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Monday 22 August 2016
Sunday 21 August 2016
The Truth shall set you free - I don't think so!
The Bible tells us that we should not rejoice when our enemy stumbles, but that is indeed hard, and I had to fight to suppress a twinge of a smile when I read that the right-wing American Christian evangelist Tony Perkins has lost his house when it was swept away in a flood. For years this person has been preaching that floods, hurricanes and natural disasters are God's punishments on homosexuals and abortionists and I was left wondering how he will explain this to his poor family who have suffered a tragedy that their husband and father has assured them is reserved for moral degenerates. In addition, if such disasters are punishment for abortionists and homosexuals, I also wonder which category he fits into and how he will explain that to his poor family? Perhaps he fits both! I do of course feel compassion for his family as they cannot be held accountable for the insanity of their husband and father and they are suffering great loss, but the Bible also tells us that the sins of the father will be visited upon the children, so his family will be quite justified in holding Mr Perkins responsible for their tragedy. All this is, of course, God's Truth and His/Her will.
It must be wonderful to know the truth because it absolves you of any responsibility to think for yourself. However, if I may paraphrase a great American (John Wayne), when I hear someone telling me they know the truth I reach for my gun, because people who know a truth have an unattractive disposition to kill all of us who disagree with them. As you know, I have an admiration for Karl Marx amongst others, but I could never be a communist, why, because Lenin poisoned Marx’s works by declaring them to be a truth. “Marxism is scientific, therefore it is true” he wrote and condemned the communist movement to become an intolerant form of totalitarian thought with the blame landing squarely on the unfortunate Marx. When Marx claimed to be applying scientific techniques to his work he was referring to his empirical methodology utilising research and data, he was most certainly not proclaiming a truth. Marx told us that he had discovered the inexorable laws of human development, but, as Alfred Marshall tells us, when an economist uses the term law, he/she is simply referring to what he calls, general tendencies, telling us that “the term ‘law’ means nothing more than a general proposition or statement of tendencies, more or less certain, more or less definite”. The term law is ‘a statement that a certain course of action may be expected under certain conditions by members of a social group’ and, whilst Marx did indeed declare the inevitable collapse of capitalism, it would be a very foolish person today who could look at our world and say that Marx was completely wrong. Marx was perhaps arrogant and overconfident in his predictions, but can hardly be blamed for proclaiming a truth.
If you believe in truth you are inevitably set on a totalitarian path because everyone else is by definition wrong and you have total knowledge that cannot be refuted. You must, in the cause of proclaiming and advancing your truth, be intolerant. That is the main problem with religion, there are a million 'truths' out there and their adherents are the most intolerant and vicious people on the planet. The truth shall set you free an ardent evangelical told me with great enthusiasm. Oh no it won’t I replied, it will enslave me and poison my brain, making me arrogant, intellectually sterile and an intolerant bigot, and the worst part, it will justify my intolerance and bigotry, it will even justify me killing other human beings in the name of love. It always intrigues me how the love of a god produces a hatred of people.
My freedom came when David Hume showed me that there is no such thing as an absolute truth, that all things are relative and all science a matter of probability, not certainty. By showing us that we cannot know an absolute truth makes David Hume, in my opinion, the greatest of thinkers. Hume's scepticism liberates, destroys dogma and is the antidote to bigotry, discrimination and sectarianism. If you want to be truly free, I suggest a healthy dose of scepticism to rid your mind of the poison of certainty and show you how little you really know. So, just as I am not a communist, neither am I a Marxist in the sense that people use that phrase. I admire Marx and accept much of his work, but if you are a reader of this blog you will know that I read more Adam Smith than Marx. I am not a patriot of course, no intelligent person is, but I confess to a pride that two of the greatest thinkers in history, and certainly in modern history, were Scots. So, if I find that Marx, Hume and Smith all agree on something, then who am I to argue? You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
It must be wonderful to know the truth because it absolves you of any responsibility to think for yourself. However, if I may paraphrase a great American (John Wayne), when I hear someone telling me they know the truth I reach for my gun, because people who know a truth have an unattractive disposition to kill all of us who disagree with them. As you know, I have an admiration for Karl Marx amongst others, but I could never be a communist, why, because Lenin poisoned Marx’s works by declaring them to be a truth. “Marxism is scientific, therefore it is true” he wrote and condemned the communist movement to become an intolerant form of totalitarian thought with the blame landing squarely on the unfortunate Marx. When Marx claimed to be applying scientific techniques to his work he was referring to his empirical methodology utilising research and data, he was most certainly not proclaiming a truth. Marx told us that he had discovered the inexorable laws of human development, but, as Alfred Marshall tells us, when an economist uses the term law, he/she is simply referring to what he calls, general tendencies, telling us that “the term ‘law’ means nothing more than a general proposition or statement of tendencies, more or less certain, more or less definite”. The term law is ‘a statement that a certain course of action may be expected under certain conditions by members of a social group’ and, whilst Marx did indeed declare the inevitable collapse of capitalism, it would be a very foolish person today who could look at our world and say that Marx was completely wrong. Marx was perhaps arrogant and overconfident in his predictions, but can hardly be blamed for proclaiming a truth.
If you believe in truth you are inevitably set on a totalitarian path because everyone else is by definition wrong and you have total knowledge that cannot be refuted. You must, in the cause of proclaiming and advancing your truth, be intolerant. That is the main problem with religion, there are a million 'truths' out there and their adherents are the most intolerant and vicious people on the planet. The truth shall set you free an ardent evangelical told me with great enthusiasm. Oh no it won’t I replied, it will enslave me and poison my brain, making me arrogant, intellectually sterile and an intolerant bigot, and the worst part, it will justify my intolerance and bigotry, it will even justify me killing other human beings in the name of love. It always intrigues me how the love of a god produces a hatred of people.
My freedom came when David Hume showed me that there is no such thing as an absolute truth, that all things are relative and all science a matter of probability, not certainty. By showing us that we cannot know an absolute truth makes David Hume, in my opinion, the greatest of thinkers. Hume's scepticism liberates, destroys dogma and is the antidote to bigotry, discrimination and sectarianism. If you want to be truly free, I suggest a healthy dose of scepticism to rid your mind of the poison of certainty and show you how little you really know. So, just as I am not a communist, neither am I a Marxist in the sense that people use that phrase. I admire Marx and accept much of his work, but if you are a reader of this blog you will know that I read more Adam Smith than Marx. I am not a patriot of course, no intelligent person is, but I confess to a pride that two of the greatest thinkers in history, and certainly in modern history, were Scots. So, if I find that Marx, Hume and Smith all agree on something, then who am I to argue? You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Thursday 18 August 2016
Your freedom must not jeopardise mine
I apologise for not posting for ten days, but I have been preoccupied with visitors, a funeral and other sundry domestic matters that diverted me from attending to my other duties. What gave rise to this post was the conviction of Anjem Choudary, the radical Islamic preacher who will now be sentenced for hate crimes and whose case has given rise to a debate about freedom of speech in Britain. This is a debate that necessitates a continuous dialogue, as freedom and rights are dynamic and should not be regarded as static and given. This also applies to the debate about all forms of freedom and human rights in an ever changing world and is of fundamental importance, particularly when states have the technological ability in the modern world to intrude into every facet of our daily lives. Freedom is, of course, intimately connected to privacy, and also gives rise to the persistent theme that runs through this blog, the nature, roles and function of government and the state.
As I have written before on this blog, freedom is not the right to do whatever you want, and you may recall my rejection of the nature of freedom postulated by people like Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy Bentham. That is what is so dangerous about neoliberal economics and the persistent calls for economic freedom and the so-called freedom of the market, a concept of freedom that leads to the gradual enslavement of ordinary working people and the demonization of those who are deemed to have no market value. This is now so obvious in western capitalist societies that I never cease to wonder how any intelligent being can still hold to any form of commitment to a free market, except of course the licensed criminals who compose our ruling classes. Freedom is not an unlimited resource. As human beings are social beings each human action inevitably impacts on other human beings, and thus, human freedom means that each individual freedom can only be recognised within the prism of our social life. Thus, individual freedoms are crucial and fundamental, but cannot be viewed as absolute, and, even more importantly, neither can governmental or state rights and freedoms. Indeed that is another debate that is rarely heard, should governments and states even be considered to have rights?
Human social living means that we are faced with numerous paradoxes in our lives. In relation to freedom we must always ask, how much freedom should be given to the enemies of freedom? We are daily faced with the paradox of attempting to establish a system of law and justice that protects our freedoms against the enemies of those freedoms, and at the moment the biggest enemy of my freedom is not Islamic fundamentalism, it is the British government and state. That is the fundamental reason that I support Scottish Independence whilst supporting membership of the EU. It is Westminster that is threatening to withdraw from the European system of human rights and the court system that protects them. It is Westminster that is attempting to remove all workers rights. It is Westminster who is threatening to invade every aspect of my private life. It is Westminster that is destroying my health and welfare system. It is Westminster that is destroying the pensions system etc. etc. and it is Westminster that is in thrall to the economic system that is demanding the removal of all my freedoms and rights because they are constraints in its never ending quest for greater and greater profits and methods of exploitation. It is the British elite and the personnel within the Westminster pigsty for whom enough is never enough.
Your freedom must never be allowed to threaten my freedom and therefore we have a paradox, how much freedom must I grant to those of you who wish to use that freedom to restrict mine? Westminster has more in common with Anjem Choudary than they would ever wish to accept. For example, the aforementioned Mr Choudary argues that real freedom is achieved under the restrictions of Islamic sharia law, just as the Christian argues that true freedom is submission to the will of the Christian god and the neoliberal argues that true freedom can only be found in submission to the unrestricted market. What the Islamic fundamentalist, the fundamentalist Christian and the fundamentalist free marketeer have in common is a fierce resistance to any form of regulation of their activities. What they all demand is that I sacrifice my freedoms to theirs. However, sharia law, many of the interpretations of Christian law, and the free market, would place me in an intolerable situation from my perspective of freedom. We therefore have a situation whereby I argue for the freedom of both the Muslim and the Christian to practice their faith, but, in an Islamic and Christian ruled society, they would persecute my freedom to reject their faith and religious practices. With respect to the free market, their freedom will destroy my freedom to remove my labour, to negotiate my wages and terms and conditions of employment, to enjoy a pension etc. Similarly, whilst they demand that they have an absolute freedom to promote and practice their religion and their economic policies, I restrict their attempts to coerce me into their faith, and it is no use anyone telling me that modern Christians would not do that, because they have done it before and would no doubt do it again.
As a result, I could never be reconciled with the Anjem Choudary's of this world nor he with me, just as I could never be reconciled with a merchant banker or a hedge fund manager. An intelligent society then requires compromise from both sides and that is the delicate balance that we seek to achieve in a just and democratic society. However, compromise requires the acceptance from both sides that they will have to sacrifice something, and that is when intolerance raises its head. A British jury decided that tolerance cannot be extended to the freedom to kill those who will not submit to Islamic domination, nor to the freedom to call for such action. However, by the same token I could never be reconciled with Donald Trump. Americans should beware because they may get what they vote for. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
As I have written before on this blog, freedom is not the right to do whatever you want, and you may recall my rejection of the nature of freedom postulated by people like Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy Bentham. That is what is so dangerous about neoliberal economics and the persistent calls for economic freedom and the so-called freedom of the market, a concept of freedom that leads to the gradual enslavement of ordinary working people and the demonization of those who are deemed to have no market value. This is now so obvious in western capitalist societies that I never cease to wonder how any intelligent being can still hold to any form of commitment to a free market, except of course the licensed criminals who compose our ruling classes. Freedom is not an unlimited resource. As human beings are social beings each human action inevitably impacts on other human beings, and thus, human freedom means that each individual freedom can only be recognised within the prism of our social life. Thus, individual freedoms are crucial and fundamental, but cannot be viewed as absolute, and, even more importantly, neither can governmental or state rights and freedoms. Indeed that is another debate that is rarely heard, should governments and states even be considered to have rights?
Human social living means that we are faced with numerous paradoxes in our lives. In relation to freedom we must always ask, how much freedom should be given to the enemies of freedom? We are daily faced with the paradox of attempting to establish a system of law and justice that protects our freedoms against the enemies of those freedoms, and at the moment the biggest enemy of my freedom is not Islamic fundamentalism, it is the British government and state. That is the fundamental reason that I support Scottish Independence whilst supporting membership of the EU. It is Westminster that is threatening to withdraw from the European system of human rights and the court system that protects them. It is Westminster that is attempting to remove all workers rights. It is Westminster who is threatening to invade every aspect of my private life. It is Westminster that is destroying my health and welfare system. It is Westminster that is destroying the pensions system etc. etc. and it is Westminster that is in thrall to the economic system that is demanding the removal of all my freedoms and rights because they are constraints in its never ending quest for greater and greater profits and methods of exploitation. It is the British elite and the personnel within the Westminster pigsty for whom enough is never enough.
Your freedom must never be allowed to threaten my freedom and therefore we have a paradox, how much freedom must I grant to those of you who wish to use that freedom to restrict mine? Westminster has more in common with Anjem Choudary than they would ever wish to accept. For example, the aforementioned Mr Choudary argues that real freedom is achieved under the restrictions of Islamic sharia law, just as the Christian argues that true freedom is submission to the will of the Christian god and the neoliberal argues that true freedom can only be found in submission to the unrestricted market. What the Islamic fundamentalist, the fundamentalist Christian and the fundamentalist free marketeer have in common is a fierce resistance to any form of regulation of their activities. What they all demand is that I sacrifice my freedoms to theirs. However, sharia law, many of the interpretations of Christian law, and the free market, would place me in an intolerable situation from my perspective of freedom. We therefore have a situation whereby I argue for the freedom of both the Muslim and the Christian to practice their faith, but, in an Islamic and Christian ruled society, they would persecute my freedom to reject their faith and religious practices. With respect to the free market, their freedom will destroy my freedom to remove my labour, to negotiate my wages and terms and conditions of employment, to enjoy a pension etc. Similarly, whilst they demand that they have an absolute freedom to promote and practice their religion and their economic policies, I restrict their attempts to coerce me into their faith, and it is no use anyone telling me that modern Christians would not do that, because they have done it before and would no doubt do it again.
As a result, I could never be reconciled with the Anjem Choudary's of this world nor he with me, just as I could never be reconciled with a merchant banker or a hedge fund manager. An intelligent society then requires compromise from both sides and that is the delicate balance that we seek to achieve in a just and democratic society. However, compromise requires the acceptance from both sides that they will have to sacrifice something, and that is when intolerance raises its head. A British jury decided that tolerance cannot be extended to the freedom to kill those who will not submit to Islamic domination, nor to the freedom to call for such action. However, by the same token I could never be reconciled with Donald Trump. Americans should beware because they may get what they vote for. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Sunday 7 August 2016
Me ignorant? Definitely!
One of the characteristics of modern living that is continually highlighted in the political narratives that we read about and hear every day, is the refusal, indeed the inability, to accept any form of criticism. I am continually struck by the behaviour of Donald Tramp when he is confronted by criticism. He loses all sense of reason and proportion and strikes out viciously at his critics. He is, of course, not alone in this as it is a characteristic of all modern politicians, it is just that the Tramp has raised his responses to an art form. However, in my opinion criticism should never be viewed negatively, indeed, criticism is the bedrock of progress. When I am criticised, my first reaction is to ask if there is any foundation for the criticism. It involves a process of self-examination. I encourage people to criticise me all the time, for example, I continually ask people for their opinions of what I write in this blog. One person responded to me with what I suspect is a quote they got somewhere and told me that "Being educated doesn't mean you can't be ignorant, and being intelligent often has little to do with education" I suspect this was intended as a put me down, but although some responses can be hurtful, that is only momentary because they normally signal that the respondent has no answer and just wants to deflate what they suspect is an overinflated ego because they don't really understand what it is I am saying.
I did not respond to this person as I do not wish to offend, but their quote was useful. Ignorance is a want of knowledge, and therefore regardless of the amount of education you have had you are always going to be in ignorance about a great many things. It has been attributed to Winston Churchill that he claimed that when he was fifteen he knew everything, that when he was thirty he realised that he did not know everything and when he was fifty he realised that he knew nothing. Thus, Churchill did not really become educated until he was over fifty. Like Churchill I am very aware of my ignorance. For example, I have no knowledge of the world of celebrity. I have never seen a soap opera for example and so I do not know a great many of the people who are regarded as celebrities. I am very ignorant about technology and do not possess a smart phone or a tablet and have no idea how they work. I have never been on Facebook or Twitter and wouldn't know how to. Thus, I admit to being a very ignorant person, and my critic was quite accurate. When he said that being intelligent has little to do with education, my response is that intelligence has nothing to do with education. What education does is inform intelligence, but the intelligence exists in a person regardless of education. With no education a person will still be intelligent. As I have repeatedly said on this blog, education has little to do with schooling, although school provides us with the tools and methodology to enable us to become educated.
You see, people like to feel important, and they think an education makes you important, but I have always maintained that there is no such thing as an important person. There are important positions in the world that are occupied by certain people, but there is no one who would really be missed in the sense that they are irreplaceable. It is arguable that the President of the United States is an important person and yet, if the President dropped dead they would be replaced within the hour and except for mourning the loss of someone you perhaps like and respect, nothing much would change. There are great scientists doing great work, but science is a collective enterprise and if a scientist, doing important work, drops dead, they will also be replaced, with the proviso that their work may be delayed a bit. The really important people in this world are those that each of you love. To you they are irreplaceable and you are quite right to say that. That is importance, not Presidents and Prime Ministers, not the celebrity.
It is therefore important that we respond to criticism positively. It is not intelligent to reject criticism without consideration. Criticism cannot be negative. If it is done from spite, then you can be confident that your critic recognises that you have a point and will not admit to it. You can therefore be more confident in your assertion and have thus gained in knowledge. If the criticism turns out, after examination to be baseless, you have gained once more because you can again be more confident that the view you held was correct. If the criticism turns out to be substantial you have again gained, because you will realise that you are wrong or incorrect and you can then change your point of view or opinion and gain both in knowledge and as a person. There is no loss, except perhaps to your pride, because there is nothing wrong in being wrong. The only wrong is in remaining wrong when you know you are wrong. That is why criticism is a fundamental part of progress. It is a moral process if approached positively. I long for the day when someone stands up in the pigsty and tells the Prime Minister or some other "important" person in government that they are wrong and the Prime Minister responds by considering the point and perhaps saying "Oh I never thought of that" and admitting that they will have to think again. That is the mark of an educated person. It will never happen in Westminster though, and that is why modern politics is a thoroughly immoral profession. You have been warned.
I did not respond to this person as I do not wish to offend, but their quote was useful. Ignorance is a want of knowledge, and therefore regardless of the amount of education you have had you are always going to be in ignorance about a great many things. It has been attributed to Winston Churchill that he claimed that when he was fifteen he knew everything, that when he was thirty he realised that he did not know everything and when he was fifty he realised that he knew nothing. Thus, Churchill did not really become educated until he was over fifty. Like Churchill I am very aware of my ignorance. For example, I have no knowledge of the world of celebrity. I have never seen a soap opera for example and so I do not know a great many of the people who are regarded as celebrities. I am very ignorant about technology and do not possess a smart phone or a tablet and have no idea how they work. I have never been on Facebook or Twitter and wouldn't know how to. Thus, I admit to being a very ignorant person, and my critic was quite accurate. When he said that being intelligent has little to do with education, my response is that intelligence has nothing to do with education. What education does is inform intelligence, but the intelligence exists in a person regardless of education. With no education a person will still be intelligent. As I have repeatedly said on this blog, education has little to do with schooling, although school provides us with the tools and methodology to enable us to become educated.
You see, people like to feel important, and they think an education makes you important, but I have always maintained that there is no such thing as an important person. There are important positions in the world that are occupied by certain people, but there is no one who would really be missed in the sense that they are irreplaceable. It is arguable that the President of the United States is an important person and yet, if the President dropped dead they would be replaced within the hour and except for mourning the loss of someone you perhaps like and respect, nothing much would change. There are great scientists doing great work, but science is a collective enterprise and if a scientist, doing important work, drops dead, they will also be replaced, with the proviso that their work may be delayed a bit. The really important people in this world are those that each of you love. To you they are irreplaceable and you are quite right to say that. That is importance, not Presidents and Prime Ministers, not the celebrity.
It is therefore important that we respond to criticism positively. It is not intelligent to reject criticism without consideration. Criticism cannot be negative. If it is done from spite, then you can be confident that your critic recognises that you have a point and will not admit to it. You can therefore be more confident in your assertion and have thus gained in knowledge. If the criticism turns out, after examination to be baseless, you have gained once more because you can again be more confident that the view you held was correct. If the criticism turns out to be substantial you have again gained, because you will realise that you are wrong or incorrect and you can then change your point of view or opinion and gain both in knowledge and as a person. There is no loss, except perhaps to your pride, because there is nothing wrong in being wrong. The only wrong is in remaining wrong when you know you are wrong. That is why criticism is a fundamental part of progress. It is a moral process if approached positively. I long for the day when someone stands up in the pigsty and tells the Prime Minister or some other "important" person in government that they are wrong and the Prime Minister responds by considering the point and perhaps saying "Oh I never thought of that" and admitting that they will have to think again. That is the mark of an educated person. It will never happen in Westminster though, and that is why modern politics is a thoroughly immoral profession. You have been warned.
Wednesday 3 August 2016
You can fool some of the people all of the time
I was asked to explain myself recently on the points I make about how the classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo are not responsible for the intellectual barbarity that passes for free market economics in this sorry world. Indeed intellectual barbarity is too flattering a description of this abortion of a system as I can find nothing intellectual in it. As I have alluded to in earlier posts, the foundations of what passes for economic theory today are to be found in the writings of the Russian born naturalised American Ayn Rand. I have not enough space here to give a proper description of Rand's ravings but I will attempt to summarise what is in reality psychopathy masquerading as philosophy.
Adam Smith preempted the philosophy of Ayn Rand in 1776 when he wrote that "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind" because that is the dominant message of the philosophy that Rand called Objectivism. This belief system has become very popular and influential, particularly in the United States, and was, as far as I am concerned, the dominant influence on Thatcher. For example, Paul Ryan is a US Congressman and is the incumbent Speaker of the House of Representatives. He has been a Congressman since 1999 and in 2012 was the Republican candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the United States. Ryan is an enthusiastic supporter of Objectivism. He is also a prominent Roman Catholic. As a result of Ryan's candidacy and his outspoken admiration for Objectivism, 157 prominent Roman Catholic intellectuals published a paper called "On All of Our Shoulders" expressing alarm at Ryan's economic and social policy proposals and dissociating Roman Catholicism from the teachings of Objectivism, stressing how Congressman Ryan, whilst being perfectly free to promote his ideas as a candidate, was not entitled to present them as representing Catholic teaching. 'On All of Our Shoulders' stated that
“Congressman Paul Ryan's candidacy for Vice President brings the threat of this social philosophy home to the Church. We do not question Paul Ryan's faith. We are concerned however, that defenders of Ryan have gone beyond highlighting the aspects of Catholic moral teaching with which his political positions are laudably consistent, to argue that his Ayn Rand "inspired" individualist and anti-government vision and the policies they inform are themselves legitimately Catholic. They are not!"
This group of American Catholics were particularly concerned with the anti-social nature of Objectivist philosophy and the dangers it poses to social cohesion and unity. This is because Objectivism demands a completely unrestricted and unregulated economic system, extreme individualism, selfishness and unrestrained greed, and the complete removal of all welfare. It condemns altruism as evil, and, as I said earlier, beginning with the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, its ideas have become increasingly influential in Britain as well. If you are kind enough to read this blog on a regular basis, I trust you will recognise that my principal goal is to understand and explain how the economic and political models that determine policy-making in the Western world are both barbaric and anti-social, have come to such prominence and dominance, and continue to influence public policy when the results of their barbaric and anti-social nature are so demonstrable. The forces of greed, of elitism, of pure unadulterated selfishness have always craved a justification for their behaviour, a philosophical excuse to rape and pillage a society’s resources and deny the rest of society an equitable access to its material and moral riches. They were given this justification gift-wrapped in the doctrines of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. I have written in earlier posts how the economist JK Galbraith told us that "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
In the so-called philosophy of Objectivism they found it.
Because of its extreme nature, Objectivism must be implemented very gradually and without actually admitting that what is being done arises from this source, as it is in direct conflict with traditional British norms and values. As a result, governments will not admit to implementing the core principles of this particular philosophy but implementing them they most surely are with respect to the institutionalising of greed and selfishness, the systematic transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, the dismantling of our public services, the demonization of the poor and disadvantaged, and the ideological war against welfare and the public sector in general. As in the United States, Objectivism has become an inspirational guide for successive British governments and their masters in the financial, business and propertied sectors because it justifies and gives respectability to total selfishness and a disregard for the poor and the unfortunate. It makes greed noble and virtuous and absolves the rich from any guilt or blame for poverty and inequality. Rand argues that any form of attachment to any other person, or any social grouping, is a form of slavery, to be free we must only care for, and look out for, ourselves, not even our own family. That, in my opinion, is a form of insanity.
Despite a very brief description of this odious belief system I trust you will see how it is a gross insult to someone as brilliant, caring and gentle as Adam Smith to associate him with the filth that passes for economics in today's world. No intelligent and educated person could argue for the economic and social garbage that has brought both Britain and the United States to the position they are in when they will turn to people like Nigel Farage, Boris the Spider and Donald the Tramp for deliverance from the chaos inflicted upon them by neoliberal free market economic and political ideology. This post is obviously too short to give you an understanding of Objectivism, but hopefully it will make you think and begin to question the foundations our modern societies are built on. As always, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
Adam Smith preempted the philosophy of Ayn Rand in 1776 when he wrote that "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind" because that is the dominant message of the philosophy that Rand called Objectivism. This belief system has become very popular and influential, particularly in the United States, and was, as far as I am concerned, the dominant influence on Thatcher. For example, Paul Ryan is a US Congressman and is the incumbent Speaker of the House of Representatives. He has been a Congressman since 1999 and in 2012 was the Republican candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the United States. Ryan is an enthusiastic supporter of Objectivism. He is also a prominent Roman Catholic. As a result of Ryan's candidacy and his outspoken admiration for Objectivism, 157 prominent Roman Catholic intellectuals published a paper called "On All of Our Shoulders" expressing alarm at Ryan's economic and social policy proposals and dissociating Roman Catholicism from the teachings of Objectivism, stressing how Congressman Ryan, whilst being perfectly free to promote his ideas as a candidate, was not entitled to present them as representing Catholic teaching. 'On All of Our Shoulders' stated that
“Congressman Paul Ryan's candidacy for Vice President brings the threat of this social philosophy home to the Church. We do not question Paul Ryan's faith. We are concerned however, that defenders of Ryan have gone beyond highlighting the aspects of Catholic moral teaching with which his political positions are laudably consistent, to argue that his Ayn Rand "inspired" individualist and anti-government vision and the policies they inform are themselves legitimately Catholic. They are not!"
This group of American Catholics were particularly concerned with the anti-social nature of Objectivist philosophy and the dangers it poses to social cohesion and unity. This is because Objectivism demands a completely unrestricted and unregulated economic system, extreme individualism, selfishness and unrestrained greed, and the complete removal of all welfare. It condemns altruism as evil, and, as I said earlier, beginning with the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, its ideas have become increasingly influential in Britain as well. If you are kind enough to read this blog on a regular basis, I trust you will recognise that my principal goal is to understand and explain how the economic and political models that determine policy-making in the Western world are both barbaric and anti-social, have come to such prominence and dominance, and continue to influence public policy when the results of their barbaric and anti-social nature are so demonstrable. The forces of greed, of elitism, of pure unadulterated selfishness have always craved a justification for their behaviour, a philosophical excuse to rape and pillage a society’s resources and deny the rest of society an equitable access to its material and moral riches. They were given this justification gift-wrapped in the doctrines of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. I have written in earlier posts how the economist JK Galbraith told us that "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
In the so-called philosophy of Objectivism they found it.
Because of its extreme nature, Objectivism must be implemented very gradually and without actually admitting that what is being done arises from this source, as it is in direct conflict with traditional British norms and values. As a result, governments will not admit to implementing the core principles of this particular philosophy but implementing them they most surely are with respect to the institutionalising of greed and selfishness, the systematic transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, the dismantling of our public services, the demonization of the poor and disadvantaged, and the ideological war against welfare and the public sector in general. As in the United States, Objectivism has become an inspirational guide for successive British governments and their masters in the financial, business and propertied sectors because it justifies and gives respectability to total selfishness and a disregard for the poor and the unfortunate. It makes greed noble and virtuous and absolves the rich from any guilt or blame for poverty and inequality. Rand argues that any form of attachment to any other person, or any social grouping, is a form of slavery, to be free we must only care for, and look out for, ourselves, not even our own family. That, in my opinion, is a form of insanity.
Despite a very brief description of this odious belief system I trust you will see how it is a gross insult to someone as brilliant, caring and gentle as Adam Smith to associate him with the filth that passes for economics in today's world. No intelligent and educated person could argue for the economic and social garbage that has brought both Britain and the United States to the position they are in when they will turn to people like Nigel Farage, Boris the Spider and Donald the Tramp for deliverance from the chaos inflicted upon them by neoliberal free market economic and political ideology. This post is obviously too short to give you an understanding of Objectivism, but hopefully it will make you think and begin to question the foundations our modern societies are built on. As always, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
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